Tuesday, August 7, 2012

The Prosecutor

…in the Mr. Toad section from the feature "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad" was animated by Ollie Johnston. Here he had the chance to explore a villain type character after having animated mostly endearing protagonists. Ollie gave the Prosecutor sharp timing and interesting theatrical gestures.Definitely a high point in Johnston animation.

The following drawings are by Milt Kahl. I am guessing that Milt was helping out with design issues and that he went over some of Ollie's work. There is also a possibility that Milt might have lobbied for this character's assignment, as he would do later with Captain Hook, though unsuccessfully.

In any case, these are very strong drawings, and we have come to expect that from Milt. Even the back view with it's ominous shape has personality. This stuff is still so inspiring!

For this film Milt animated scenes with MacBadger, Rat and Mole. I will post some of those roughs soon.

12 comments:

Hi Mr Andreas Deja! I Know this is out of context, but I just looked upon a post that was made in april when you shared your thoughts about how animation was done today, all the big switch to GC and finally your comment about the medium needing a "brand new thing" or technnique or something.

Recently I found some info about a new Disney short called Paperman, that will use a mix of 2D and 3D, but to overall look like a 2D drawing, kinda like what you and your colleagues did with the CAPS system back in the 90s. At a Disney forum some guy who had already watched some parts of the short (I,ve seen some stills and they look wonderful) says that is the future, like animation but with depth or something like that.

Have you seen that short? What do you think about it? It would be the future like what happened with the CAPS system? I would love to know your point of view in this.

LOVE both this and Ichabod! Some of my favorites as a child watching it on the Disney Channel, back when that channel actually represented the real Disney - not just some commercial empire. Sorry for the rant slippage! LOL. Thanks for sharing, Andreas. Hope you've got some of Ollie's drawings to share as well.

Oh, and I (and I'm sure hundreds of others) would love to hear your thoughts on Paperman too!

Here's a great clip from one of the Disney Family Album series showing Ollie talking about animating he prosecutor. I like how even decades later, he still feels the emotion when he does the walk and spinaround.Great stuff! Thanks for sharing these!!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FTO6DcBENk&feature=relmfu

I checked out Ollie's scenes of the prosecutor back in the day. I love the timing and fluidity and the crispness and theatricality of the poses. Between Smee, and his dance stuff in Ichabod, and his Song of the South stuff, he did some of my favorite animation of that period.